The 49ers fired offensive coordinator Mike Martz last offseason without having a replacement lined up.

They considered various candidates -- Scott Linehan, Jeff Jagodzinski, Hue Jackson, Clyde Christensen, Rob Chudzinski, etc. -- before finally hiring Jimmy Raye.

Coach Mike Singletary could be taking a similarly deliberate approach in finding a special-teams coach to replace the recently fired Al Everest.

Kurt Schottenheimer was the latest candidate to interview. Larry MacDuff and Bobby April interviewed previously, with April taking a job with the Eagles instead. There are other potential candidates to consider if Singletary chooses to widen the search. The Panthers fired special-teams coach Danny Crossman late last week. Longtime NFL special-teams coach Bruce DeHaven, who spent the last three seasons with Seattle, also became available recently.

Singletary spent a month looking for Martz's replacement. Eleven days have passed since Everest's dismissal.

Singletary hasn't been in coaching all that long. He might have a better feel for more candidates around the league if he had been an NFL coach for the past 20 years. That could partially explain why these searches take a little time. Sometimes a team knows what it doesn't want before it can find what it does want.

As Singletary put it after hiring Raye: "First of all, it certainly took longer than we would have liked it to, but sometimes good things come to those who wait. The thing that I did not want to do is go ahead and make a knee-jerk decision and try and select someone before we thought we had our guy. This process to me went exactly like it needed to go except that it went a little bit longer than I would like for it to."